As a Ph.D student, I searched for advice on succeeding in grad school, and often thought that eventually I would repay the favor when I became a professor. I never got around to doing that, but now decided to give it a shot. So, here goes: Tip #1: Don’t get advice from the Internet. Grad … Continue reading Advice for the budding theorist
A different type of pseudo
(see also this post and these lecture notes) There is a longstanding feud in statistics between "frequentists" and "Bayesians". One way to understand these two camps is to consider the following statements: The probability that my paternal great great grandfather had blue eyes is 5% The probability that the $latex 10^{10^{10}}$-th digit of $latex \pi$ is … Continue reading A different type of pseudo
Is computational hardness the rule or the exception?
As a cryptographer, I am used to the viewpoint that computational problems are presumed hard unless proven otherwise. We cryptographers constantly come up with new hardness assumptions, and generally use the heuristic that if a problem doesn't have an obvious algorithm then it must be hard. We've had some interesting failures (see here for a recent example), but this heuristic seems … Continue reading Is computational hardness the rule or the exception?
FOCS 2015 and KARPFest80
[Forwarding an announcement by Prasad Raghavendra --Boaz] FOCS 2015 will be held at Berkeley, California on October 18–20, 2015. Registrations are open at: http://focs15.simons.berkeley.edu/registration.html The deadline for early registration is Sept 25th. KARPfest80 On Saturday October 17, the day immediately before FOCS 2015, the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing will host a celebration … Continue reading FOCS 2015 and KARPFest80
Outreach on Fairness, Privacy and Data Analysis
A lovely interview with Cynthia Dwork in the New York Times on bias in computations. In particular, discussing our work (joint with Moritz Hardt, Toni Pitassi and Rich Zemel) on Fairness through Awareness. Our Science article, The reusable holdout: Preserving validity in adaptive data analysis (joint with Cynthia Dwork, Vitaly Feldman, Moritz Hardt, Toniann Pitassi and Aaron … Continue reading Outreach on Fairness, Privacy and Data Analysis
Sanjeev Arora on rethinking the graduate algorithms course
[Below is a guest post from Sanjeev Arora on his redesign of the traditional graduate algorithms course to be a better match for today's students. --Boaz] For the last two years I have tried new ideas in teaching algorithms at the graduate level. The course is directed at first year CS grads, but is also taken by grads … Continue reading Sanjeev Arora on rethinking the graduate algorithms course
Joining the new Harvard
After five fun and stimulating years in the wonderful Microsoft Research New England, I have decided to move on. I will be joining Harvard University as a professor of Computer Science in spring 2016. Moreover, I am thrilled to say that Madhu Sudan will also be joining Harvard. Harvard's Computer Science is on a growth streak and so … Continue reading Joining the new Harvard
Indistinguishability Obfuscation and Multi-linear Maps: A Brave New World – Guest Post by Ran Canetti
A bunch of us hapless cryptographers got the following boilerplate comment from the FOCS'15 PC: "Overall, submissions related to multi-linear maps and indistinguishability obfuscation were held to a somewhat higher standard. The PC expressed some concern with the recent flurry of activities pertaining to multi-linear maps and indistinguishability obfuscation, given how little we understand and … Continue reading Indistinguishability Obfuscation and Multi-linear Maps: A Brave New World – Guest Post by Ran Canetti
Popularizing TOC
It is hard to overestimate the impact of Popular Science books such as “A Brief History of Time” and “Chaos: Making a New Science” on Scientific Research. The indirect impact of popularizing Science and Scientific Education often surpass the direct contribution that most scientists can hope to achieve in their life time. For this reason, … Continue reading Popularizing TOC
Doing a 180 and still spinning
I taught my first class last quarter and it was an enjoyable and eye-opening experience at many levels. First some background. The class was undergraduate algorithms or as popularly known in UCLA - CS180. There were 129 students (kind of like jumping into the deep end to test the waters). Like most other CS curricula, it is a … Continue reading Doing a 180 and still spinning
Windows On Theory 